My friend, allow your brothers and sisters to experience the illusions they perceive as real. Often it is only when our brothers and sisters physically, emotionally and spiritually experience the emptiness of their actions and reactions that they realize their futility. Please understand that I’m not saying that you should not make an effort to guide your brothers and sisters in a positive direction. But be very aware of the subtle differences between guidance and control. These differences are more often than not very muddled in the ego’s thought system. If asked, we may offer our brothers and sisters guidance, but we need to refrain from attachment to its outcome. Be not attached to your brothers and sisters following your direction. Look within your heart, offer support and love, and trust that His will will be done. If your brothers and sisters insist on falling, let them fall, for sooner or later they will land on their knees, and when they do they will not experience pain but relief. One of the greatest gifts you can offer your brothers and sisters is the loving space they need to fall, land on their knees and experience their perfection.

Imagine being born into a dream – a mass illusion transformed over thousands of years by billions of people into what today we call reality. The billions of people subdivided into territories they called countries, into belief systems they called religions and into groups they called races. Countries subdivided into states, provinces and cities, which were then subdivided into neighborhoods that subdivided into buildings or single-family homes. Religions divided into conservative and liberal sects, which then grew into more conservative and liberal branches. Races divided themselves by all of the above, including color, tone, ethnic makeup and financial status.

Each group then teaches and defends that its way is the way, and its truth is the truth. And each group creates its own reality out of what it believes. Each group then tries to sell us on its current forms and laws, telling us that this is what is “right.” Each teaches us that the closer we are to following its form, the happier, more successful and peaceful we will be. And somewhere deep within, we know that it is our right to be happy and to be at peace. So we buy into it, and regardless of how little sense the illusion makes, we keep participating for if we stop we will be judged as outcasts, trouble-makers or bums. We are taught that if we stop participating in the group’s way of life, our hopes for happiness, success and peace will also end. The group we are in tells us that if we go against the norm, we will not find happiness, peace or success. So we buy into the illusion the group offers us, believing that there is no other way. We carefully weave and contour the illusion into one we can live with for now. But my friend, regardless of how we choose to weave, contour and experience the illusion, it is still an illusion.

The ego promises us that if we follow its rules and laws, we will obtain peace of mind and joy. But in truth, the ego can only offer what it is. It can offer us what is unreal, temporary and unfulfilling. We have tried to fill ourselves with the gifts the ego offers. At first, the gifts are small but large enough to temporarily satisfy us. Yet, being temporary and unreal, the same gifts that once satisfied us ultimately become small and meaningless. Once our minds have digested the ego’s gifts, we again have a sensation of feeling empty. The ego promised us fulfillment. It promised us that its gifts would bring us true joy and peace of mind. But after digesting its gifts, we again feel empty, and we begin to ask why. Then the ego, in order to protect itself from these questions, offers us bigger gifts. It knows it cannot continue to fool us with little illusions for they no longer fill the emptiness within. Thus, it offers us larger illusions, and at first our reaction is, “Wow!” For a short time, we believe that these illusions, that we call real, will satisfy the empty feelings we possess within. Yet, big or small, these are illusions, and illusions, being nothing, can by definition never fill us up.

There comes a time in the lives of all worshippers of junk when they must ask themselves why, after following all the rules the ego’s world asks for, they are still not happy, and why they are not at peace with themselves and their world. In this society, such a time is usually referred to by the ego as a mental breakdown, depression, a mid-life crisis or burnout. These phrases are used by the ego to put down and sedate those individuals who dare to question this world’s reality. For in this world, the ego knows when it is losing control of its slaves, and it will not stand idly by. The world is ruled by the ego. The ego has invested a lot of time in these people, and it does not want them to go free. But the worshippers of junk, the slaves of the ego, can only live in an unnatural state for so long before they begin to question how they feel. Soon they begin to wonder if this is what it’s all about. When they finally realize that they are measuring their worth by how much junk they have acquired, sadness, lack of peace, a mental breakdown, a mid-life crisis, burnout or depression may set in.

My friend, do not buy into the world’s fantasies and negative connotations. If this is what you are experiencing, this moment should become a time of great joy and celebration, for you have, in some manner, finally realized that junk has truly nothing to offer. You now have the opportunity to realize what the worship of junk and illusions has truly offered you, and how its worship has made you feel. For a moment, thank yourself for the worshiping of junk, for it has brought you to the recognition of what it has to offer. It has offered you a sense of separation from your true self. It has offered you sadness. It has offered you pain. It has offered you stress, confusion, depression, doubt, emptiness, fear and regret. It has offered you nothing you ever truly desired.

In the world of illusions, success can be measured a hundred different ways, and failure a thousand others. In truth, you achieve success through your simple participation in the life experience. You experience growth, and that is what you have come to do. If you accomplish what you have come to do, then you have succeeded. In that sense, there is no more need to ever talk about being a successful human being. Yet, the ego offers people the opportunity to set different parameters around the idea of success, and they usually bite at those offers. Trying to set parameters around an illusion of success simply leads to confusion and disillusionment. For how could you ever succeed at putting parameters around something that does not exist? So you end up having many different ideas of what having a successful life really means. All these ideas are judged against each other, each chipping away at the other’s views. Yet part of what the ego tries to sell you about success is that you cannot really be completely successful unless others also view you as successful. Due to the many individual perceptions of success, this makes the task even more difficult and confusing. To add to the confusion, the ego-self so narrowly defines success that many times there is no place for also achieving happiness. Very often, the ego-self sets success and happiness so far apart that you must sacrifice one to achieve the other. Finally, even if others perceive you as successful, deep within, the ego will try to convince you that you are lying to yourself and others, that you are really just a fraud who will soon be exposed.

If a man walks in the woods for the love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer, but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making Earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.” (7)

As you continue to work on yourself, understand that if something is causing you anger, stress, unhappiness, regret or any other “negative” emotion, you are, by definition, experiencing an illusion. You will experience the illusions you still think are real. You will do so because you have made the unreal – real, and the best way to understand that what you see as valuable is actually valueless is to experience its valuelessness. Many times, when people awaken from a particular illusion, they hold themselves in judgment for having so viciously defended it. I gladly and gently remind them that they should not judge themselves, but should be grateful for the experience, and proud of their awakening. My friend, it is an awakening once you realize that the unreal, regardless of how real people want to make it, is unreal. The greatest gift any illusion can offer is the opportunity to let you see it for what it truly is.

Let’s discuss these points one by one. First, at the height of its control, the ego would have you believe that to give is to lose. It tries to convince you that if you give, you will also lose something and there is no way to get it back. If you lose something, then you become less than you were before, or you will have less than you had before. You have fewer things, thus you are a lesser person. The world teaches that when you give something away, you lose it, and if you don’t get anything in return, you are less complete, less whole. The world also teaches that, when you lose something, you must become upset. So it is not a stretch to say that the world teaches you that becoming upset is a normal and proper reaction to giving something away and not getting anything in return. Yet, we know that being upset is not the natural reaction of a child of God, because a natural reaction of the child of God is to be at peace. Therefore, there must be another way of looking at the beautiful offering of giving.

On our journey toward achieving peace of mind, it is very important to understand that there is a difference between an action and the person performing the action. An action happens at a moment in time and regardless of how we have been taught to see it, it is an opportunity. The opportunity shows us where we are within our minds. It teaches us who we truly believe ourselves to be. We can choose to react with peace now, or we can choose to react with peace later. Sooner or later we will find peace. Because of free will, we can choose when we want to experience peace. Also understand that the belief that peace is not immediately available to us does not in any way interfere with the fact that peace is always available. The time it takes us to react with peace is up to us, and will be measured not only in time, but in pain. For if we do not have peace about a situation then we are experiencing some level of pain about it.

The value of an illusion is to have the opportunity to realize that it is an illusion. The one value of all illusions lies in understanding and acknowledging their lack of value. The more we value an illusion, the more we defend it and try to protect our beliefs. If we do not physically experience its lack of value, then we will truly never believe that it is valueless. How many times in our lives have we tried to explain something important that happened in our lives only to resort to the phrase, “you really had to be there.” For most of us, this is how we learn that our illusions are valueless. We have to experience them ourselves to learn that they have no value. A guru or spiritual teacher can tell you that to find peace, you need to forgive and release your anger, but it is only by holding resentment that you can truly experience, appreciate and acknowledge its valuelessness in your life. It is only through holding onto such resentment that you can experience its full weight, its energy drain, the absolute worthlessness that such emotions bring to your life.

If we do not experience peace in the present moment, it is because we have substituted the ego’s illusions for the present moment. The ego will invite us to believe in a thousand different ways in which we can lose our peace of mind. The ego will also offer us a thousand different solutions, which only ends up adding to our confusion. Yet, if one of the ego’s illusions or solutions is unreal, then all of the ego’s illusions and solutions are unreal. For the ego’s illusions and solutions, in and of themselves, are nothing. And regardless of how many times we multiply nothing, we will still get nothing.

You might ask for an example to clarify this point. The manifestation of that example might clarify a small number of similar illusions. This is exactly what the ego would offer, because it gives more than enough wiggle room to offer us a thousand different illusions and a thousand solutions to those illusions. And as long as we have use for the ego, it can remain alive, well and in control of our perceptions. And so I offer no specific examples to cloud your thoughts. I do offer that all illusions, regardless of their manifestations, will result in a loss of peace. There is really only one illusion, one problem, which is that we are experiencing the illusion as real. Call it your spouse’s impatience, your boss’ ruthlessness, traffic or your job. Call it what you will. If it takes away your peace, it is because you have seen the illusion as real. In their essence, all illusions are the same because all illusions are not real.

Today I observe an expansion occurring. An expansion of all we think we are. This expansion simply teaches us the following: All that we think we are, we are not, and all that we ever wish we could be, we already are. There is a great strength and energy in the people leading this expansion.

At the same time, it takes a lot of strength and energy to subscribe to and follow illusions in our lives, on a daily basis. It takes a huge amount of energy to live out a lie and to keep expanding on a lie. The world of illusion, for those who believe in it, is hard, very hard. It is hard because it is unnatural, and because it is an unnatural way of living, it takes a significant amount of strength and energy to simply get through such days.

In an instant, he decided that on the way to the post office, each and every snowflake that hit his face would bring him joy; that those snow flakes would no longer cause him grief, that they would no longer make him curse the weather, or in any way negatively affect his state of mind. So after finishing his coffee, off he went walking to the post office.

As the first snowflakes hit his face, interestingly enough he also experienced his first smirk of the day. And as the snowflakes increased in volume, so too did his smirk, which turned into a smile. Soon joy became an actual thought in his mind. He began to sing “snow flakes are falling on my head” as he walked by so many other souls who had chosen, in their own way, to see the day and their walk as a hassle, inconvenience and a hazard. At first, he sang the song in his mind, then just loud enough for himself to hear it. As the snowflakes increased, so too did his volume. There he was, singing joyfully as other pedestrians probably wondered what this poor schizophrenic person was doing out in this kind of weather. The snowflakes kept falling on his face and now that his rendition of the song was a number one single in the charts of his mind, he could sing it loud, proud and with joy.

It is your beliefs and perceptions that will drive your focus; and you will experience what you focus on. If this is difficult to grasp, take, for example, two types of people we have all met: optimists and pessimists. Spend an entire day with both of these types of people. If you do this once, you will never again question that a person’s reality, how he or she sees and reacts to the world, is mainly in that person’s mind and has little or nothing to do with the outer physical world.

Every effort has been made to provide accurate source attribution. Should any attribution be found to be incorrect, the author welcomes written documentation supporting correction for subsequent printings. For material not in the public domain, selection was made according to generally accepted fair-use standards and practices.

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You Have Chosen to Remember: A Journey of Self-Awareness, Peace of Mind and Joy by James Blanchard Cisneros – a great spiritual self-help book which fosters peace of mind, inner peace, joy, awakening, success, a fulfilling life, living in the moment, love, faith, forgiveness, moving beyond negative emotions, living in the now, spiritual growth, awakening consciousness, and self actualization.